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Today I went grocery shopping and got to watch quite a few families go by with their grocery carts or checking out in front of me. Let me tell you — not only was I stunned at the reality of the “standard American diet” (SAD for an ironic acronym), but just how dangerous our stores have become — simply by carrying foods designed to kill us.
The scenario — not uncommon at all as most everyone I saw here shops the same way, unfolds with a family and their two children checking out in front of me. All of them had some measure of dangerous weight problems but the cart was laden with frozen foods, sweets, soda and two giant bottles of Hawaiian Punch. The only real food was a small bunch of bananas. Everything was full of sugar, high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated fats! All addictive and all poison to our body.{mosimage}
Summer is probably one of the most crucial seasons for healthy eating. Why you might ask? Well, for starters, we are finally out of the multiple holiday seasons that bombard us with sugars and fats. We are all thinking about the pool or beach as well as swim suits and have more skin exposed (making us self-conscious).
This means that with the increased activity — and increased heat — our body is going to demand more water and good fuel to make it through the day. If we don’t give it that, we are making our bodies work on nothing but sugar and bad fats — we are actually starting to force it to break down.
A great way to face this is just like our finances. What we are really doing is writing checks our body can’t cash (yes, I remember the old saying). We’re going into health bankruptcy. The difference is there’s no starting over — you HAVE to make changes or ultimately the body breaks down to a point of no return. As our state of health declines, we go further into debt — sometimes even financially as now we have to pay for medications.
So to start reversing this, we need to look at two things: exercise and nutrition. Let’s start with exercise. JUST START MOVING! It’s that simple when you are starting out. All you need to do is carve out two 20-minute periods during the week where you make yourself move. In the beginning, it might be simply walking, which is fine until it becomes easy (once it’s easy, walking is no longer an exercise. Sorry, but it’s true). However, what you must add to your walk is some body weight squatting (I’ll have an article on that soon), push-ups and shoulder presses. Let’s make our workouts improve our lives, not just work up a sweat in some air conditioned gym. By that, it needs to be functional and those exercises will improve every aspect of your physical activity. Mix them up — walk for two minutes and then do 10 repetitions of each exercise. Do that repeatedly until 10 to 20 minutes are up. For many of us, that’s more than we’ve ever done before.
Nutrition? CrossFit founder Greg Glassman, recommends meat (protein), vegetables (low-glycemic carbs), nuts and seeds (good healthy fats), some fruit (more good carbs), and NO SUGAR. It really is that easy. The problem is we are conditioned to eat sugar laden starches which our bodies are not capable of readily metabolizing. Yes, I know what the food pyramid tells us, but how well is it working? Take a look around. Next, eat several times a day consisting of small quantities of the good foods above, starting with breakfast. That truly is the best way to rev up the metabolism. From there, make sure you’re getting in all three nutrients — protein, fat and carbohydrates — at every setting, regardless of snack or meal.
Remember though, as the metabolism slows down and the body stores more and more fat, it will take time to lose the weight in a healthy manner. STICK WITH IT! Let’s start making “aggressive” health deposits in the bank and get ourselves out of health and wellness bankruptcy.
E-mail your questions to John Velandra at: designsinfitness@att.net. Or call him at (910) 306-3142. John is a certified personal trainer and the owner of CrossFit Cape Fear and Designs In Fitness Personal Training Services in Fayetteville. You can visit online at www.designsinfitness.net or www.crossfitcapefear.com
Summer Fitness – You Are What You Eat
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